


Love Among the Carnage

by ArcticLucie



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Immortality, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Short & Sweet, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25557346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcticLucie/pseuds/ArcticLucie
Summary: Rick dies, but then he wakes up. Every time.Or, the Old Guard AU my brain couldn’t let go of.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes
Comments: 14
Kudos: 87





	Love Among the Carnage

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so I watched the Old Guard last night. Again. And woke up with this little gem. Enjoy!

It began where he died—the first time—in a field beside a long stretch of Georgia highway with a bullet in his chest and terror in his eyes. Rick woke up alone in a hospital room with not even so much as a scratch to let him know he hadn’t dreamed it. But by that point, the world had already turned and he thought maybe he’d woken up in hell. He didn’t question what had happened after that, his mind preoccupied with finding his family and not getting eaten alive.

Until the dreams started. 

A flash of pain here, a vivid vision there, the pieces jumbled as he tried to make sense of it. Short dirty blond hair, dark blue eyes, rough around the edges, clinging to a redneck, the whisper of a name. And a primal need to find  _ him. _

“Daryl.”

“Who?” Morgan had asked.

“I gotta get to Atlanta.”

*

Rick found him holed up in a department store in the middle of the city pacing like a caged lion, a coiled snake ready to attack if Rick didn’t give him the right answers. But he didn’t have any. So, Daryl put a bolt through his shoulder and they both watched in abject horror as the wound forced out the intrusion and closed itself up.

“What the fuck?”

Rick shot him in the thigh in retribution, and sure enough, out popped the bullet, the skin pristine, less than a minute later. 

What. The. Fuck.

They found their way to the camp on the outskirts of Atlanta, and Rick lost himself in his family reunion and failed to notice the color drain from Merle’s face when his baby brother strolled up without the fatal gash in his side.

They didn’t talk about it after. Rick had to protect his family, and Daryl, well, words had never come easy to him.

*

“Test our blood again,” Rick demanded, Daryl biting on a cuticle at his side.

“For what?” Jenner asked as he looked up at him from his computer. “I already know you aren’t infected.”

“For something else. Anything else. Tumors, rare diseases,  _ immunities. _ I don’t know, you’re the fucking scientist, think of somethin’.”

Daryl dragged him away before he could make a fool of himself with crazy talk of shared dreams and miraculous healing.

When the CDC blew up, so did their hopes of finding answers.

They took shelter in each other as they hit the open road. Nobody else would understand.

The first time he got bit, Daryl shot him in the head. They didn’t know if they could turn, but they weren’t taking any chances.

“Why are you always with him?” Lori had snapped, their marriage teetering on the edge as he ignored the way Shane moved in to fill in the void.

_ Because he knows me. _

_ * _

The dreams of the girl caught them off guard, both gasping for air as they woke up on opposite sides of camp. The distance between them had felt unbearable before they met by the dying fire to stitch the puzzle together.

“Brunette.”

“Blue eyes.”

“Mac, Mag?”

“Maggie.”

“Farm house.”

“How the fuck we supposed to find the right one in farm country, Rick?”

“I don’t know, but we will.”

In the end, she found them.

“Daddy thinks I’m divine ‘cause I resurrected.”

“That what he thinks about the walkers too?” Daryl had grumbled.

“Not sure divinity has anything to do with it. Any of it,” Rick replied.

“Feels like a curse. They’re all gonna die. Every single one. Sooner or later.”

“Then we’ll make sure it’s later.”

*

Shane stabbed him in the back. He saw it coming, but he got a certain kind of thrill from the look on his old partner’s face when he stood back up after Shane shot him in the head. Both times.

“Gonna have to do better than that, Walsh,” Rick growled after he spat out a bullet.

Shane never questioned him again. Neither did anyone else.

*

“What the hell happened?” Rick asked, shooting straight up as his broken bones popped back into place, the sickening cracks making him shudder. He’d never get used to that. 

Rick looked over to Daryl sitting with his back against a concrete wall, one knee up as he leaned an elbow onto it. He had bloody holes in his shirt and a smear of red along his forehead, though Rick knew he didn’t have any wounds underneath it all.

“Ambush. Guess the prison wasn’t so empty after all.”

A sweep of the bodies confirmed it as Rick hummed in understanding.

“Have a good nap, Sleepin’ Beauty?”

Rick smirked at him. “Depends. Did ya kiss me awake?”

Daryl scoffed as he rolled his eyes. “In yer dreams.”

“Yeah, every night.”

Something in the air between them shifted at that, and he supposed fucking for the first time in a dilapidated prison surrounded by bodies seemed par for the course as far as the two of them went. As far as the two of them would go. Because it happened again. And again. And. Again. One would go down, the other would avenge him, and then they’d make love among the carnage.

*

They hadn’t gotten a chance to get to Michonne before she decided to put her newfound immortality to work and dismantle Woodbury from the inside out. Then she moved on to Terminus.

They made it halfway to Alexandria when Paul met them in the middle.

With the prison as their basecamp, they spent the next hundred years clearing out the undead, Rick leading the charge, his immortal warriors forever by his side. And slowly, the world recovered.

*

“We need a vacation,” Daryl said, fingers tracing lazy circles on Rick’s chest.

“Why? It ain’t like we’d go see the sights. Prolly just stay in bed the whole time.”

“A hundred years an’ yer still hot for my ass.”

“‘S a nice ass,” he said, giving it a good squeeze for emphasis. “Still will be in a thousand more.”

And he was.


End file.
